1 melee knife lost to armored 15 longsword?? bug or astromically lucky?

[Bio[redacted]]

I got a raid earlier and somehow two bandits with no armor and a skill of only 1 with only poor knives somehow beat a flak armored charecter with a blazing passion for melee at 15 skill and a longsword. Shouldn't my pawn have easily been able to dodge all the attacks thrown at them? I checked their injuries and they were barely even bleeding, when in reality they should've been hacked to pieces. Did they just get astronomically lucky and have an Xcom moment, or is something seriously bugged here?

[The Yeen Queen]

Biodeamon の投稿を引用：

I got a raid earlier and somehow two bandits with no armor and a skill of only 1 with only poor knives somehow beat a flak armored charecter with a blazing passion for melee at 15 skill and a longsword. Shouldn't my pawn have easily been able to dodge all the attacks thrown at them? I checked their injuries and they were barely even bleeding, when in reality they should've been hacked to pieces. Did they just get astronomically lucky and have an Xcom moment, or is something seriously bugged here?

High skill doesn't guarantee a win. Highly unlikely as it may be, it is possible for a chump with a knife to get lucky and land a lethal blow on a master swordsman. Your melee 15 just had some REALLY crappy rolls and the 1 melee got REALLY good rolls.

Also to note, burning passion does nothing for how well they actually perform the skill. Just how fast they level it up and a mood boost when using said skill.

[whatamidoing]

Skill also just isn't as important as in, say, Dwarf Fortress.

[glass zebra]

Melee 10 is pretty much where skill stops mattering a bit. You are at 80% hit chance at that point and only get +1% after that. Dodge still gives you 2% more if you don't have other boni to it though, but the chances are so low that it's still pretty luck based. In general the best defense is not getting hit more than you have to. Armour etc. helps, but is never a 100% solution alone in vanilla and should always be accompanied by combined arms etc.

Longsword are also rather slow and therefore luck based vs the faster weapons. They help a lot against tanky targets with heavy armour, but against more trashy enemies, you can get rather unlucky in comparison to a weaker and faster weapon.

[VoiD]

I don't have the numbers, so I'm just going by what you said, but percentage increases can be very deceiving.

in practice, if you only get 1% extra hit chance per level, a lvl 20 melee guy really is 2x better than a lvl 10, if you consider one is only missing half as many attacks (20% vs 10%)

After that, if you could get it higher, he would be 2x more effective yet again after only 5 levels, and so on.

[glass zebra]

That is not 2x better. It's 12.5% better. 80*1.125=90.

Thanks @whatamidoing. I was thinking about the maximum possible increase.

[VoiD]

You're missing the point, one guy is missing twice as many blows than the other one, so if you're only looking at the RNG, then yes, it's 2x better.

If you want that monosword blow to hit, and to erase a dangerous threat NOW, one guy is half as likely to get the job done than the other.

Not to mention the other bonuses related to melee skill

[whatamidoing]

glass zebra の投稿を引用：

That is not 2x better. It's 25% better. 80*1.25=90.

12.5%, you mean. 80 * 1.25 = 100.

[VoiD]

Also, this logic also applies to several other games, like League of Legends, armor gets "diminishing returns" the more you stack it, except it doesn't, they just made it so this issue didn't ruin the game's balance, but 1 point of armor is worth as much in the early game, as it's worth in the late game, even though one can give 1% less damage, and the other 0.1% depending on how much you've already stacked.

IE: +50% physical damage resistance is not as effective as adding +5% damage resistance to someone who already had 94%.

In one case the upgrade reduces the previous damage by half (down to 50%), in the other it reduces by 5/6 (down to 16.6%) even though the it looks like 1/10 of the stat bonus.

[glass zebra]

That is a completely different thing, since that is about reduction and not increase. Stacking the same number of reduction always get better, since in that case you should be looking at the damage you receive.
Half as much damage taken makes you survive twice as long.
Half as much hits missed does not make you do twice as much damage, except if you were at 33% hit chance.

[VoiD]

Nobody said anything about dealing 2x damage, I said he's 2x better, as a soldier.

Every time you miss the world doesn't stop to allow you to hit again and try to get your average perfectly after 1000 attacks, the guy who misses twice as much is twice as likely to get killed in many scenarios, as every time they miss a threat isn't erased, every time they miss the enemy is also taking a chance against him.

These things get quite obvious in heavy RNG games, which is the case for Rimworld, but it's highly disguised in real time and by not showing the rolls of each character.

But in games where this isn't hidden, like Battle Brothers, one guy with even 1% less hit chance due to lower base stats, or base defenses, can be considered trash while the other can be, in fact, way better than simply twice just by having a couple of percentage points extra for hit or block chances.

The same logic applis, at low values percentage chances are often not all that relevant if you want to bet anything of value on them, as they are still far too unreliable to be of any use, 20% or 40% end up being the same, a chance you won't even take.

[Darth A.R.T.H.E.R.]

I am sensing a disturbance in the fuzzy logic.

[VoiD]

Let me put you in this way:

If you had an implant item that gave any melee pawn, even one without any skills for melee, 80% chance to hit.

But

You could also give that item to a pawn you already had with 91% chance to hit, and he's already a monster, but it would take his hit chance from 92% to 99%, which one would you give?

A new warrior that could hit decently wall, so you'd have 2 of them?

Or one guy that you know will almost never, ever miss any attacks and take down most targets in a single strike nearly every time?

In practice you can replace a circle of 3 zeus hammer wielding pawns with average/high hit chances, with this one guy instead, as you know he just won't miss and he can take down even centipedes before they can react. Reliabilty is The most important thing for RNG games, you don't need to deal 80 damage in a hit, in a world where most body parts have 40 HP anyway, you just need to hit them.

IE: If you had one super pawn that just can't miss, you could finish endless mechanoid raids by having that one guy, without anyone close to him being an easy target, waiting around a corner of some cliff and just waiting for all the mechs to come over, and die, one by one by one, never getting overwhelmed, never getting surrounded, because everything is pretty sure to die in the first hit. 2 soldiers can't do this reliably with "high" hit chances, they will need support because sometimes ♥♥♥♥ just hit the fan and it's not very hard for both of them having around 20% chance to miss, each, to allow an enemy to enter their perimeter alive while the next is already coming, and they start getting surrounded.

[The Yeen Queen]

VoiD の投稿を引用：

You're missing the point, one guy is missing twice as many blows than the other one, so if you're only looking at the RNG, then yes, it's 2x better.

If you want that monosword blow to hit, and to erase a dangerous threat NOW, one guy is half as likely to get the job done than the other.

Not to mention the other bonuses related to melee skill

Except one guy ISN'T missing twice as much as the other. I don't know how you get that from 50% hit on two enemies vs 83% chance on one...

VoiD の投稿を引用：

Let me put you in this way:

If you had an implant item that gave any melee pawn, even one without any skills for melee, 80% chance to hit.

But

You could also give that item to a pawn you already had with 91% chance to hit, and he's already a monster, but it would take his hit chance from 92% to 99%, which one would you give?

A new warrior that could hit decently wall, so you'd have 2 of them?

Or one guy that you know will almost never, ever miss any attacks and take down most targets in a single strike nearly every time?

I'd take the warrior with 80%+the warrior with 91% fighting together vs a single warrior with 99% any day. Neither has a particularly high chance to miss, the 91% being very likely to hit. And if one goes down, there's still another fighting. If the 99% makes a bad roll, he's got two enemies with a very good chance to hit taking swings back at him. If either of the duo sings first, there's a very good chance the 99% will go down. If the 99% takes out the 80% before he has a chance to hit, he's likely to fall to the 91%'s swing. If he takes out the 91% with his first swing, 80% still has a good chance to take him down. That's without considering things like dodge chances.

[VoiD]

Night Foxx の投稿を引用：

VoiD の投稿を引用：

You're missing the point, one guy is missing twice as many blows than the other one, so if you're only looking at the RNG, then yes, it's 2x better.

If you want that monosword blow to hit, and to erase a dangerous threat NOW, one guy is half as likely to get the job done than the other.

Not to mention the other bonuses related to melee skill

Except one guy ISN'T missing twice as much as the other. I don't know how you get that from 50% hit on two enemies vs 83% chance on one...

VoiD の投稿を引用：

Let me put you in this way:

If you had an implant item that gave any melee pawn, even one without any skills for melee, 80% chance to hit.

But

You could also give that item to a pawn you already had with 91% chance to hit, and he's already a monster, but it would take his hit chance from 92% to 99%, which one would you give?

A new warrior that could hit decently wall, so you'd have 2 of them?

Or one guy that you know will almost never, ever miss any attacks and take down most targets in a single strike nearly every time?

I'd take the warrior with 80%+the warrior with 91% fighting together vs a single warrior with 99% any day. Neither has a particularly high chance to miss, the 91% being very likely to hit. And if one goes down, there's still another fighting. If the 99% makes a bad roll, he's got two enemies with a very good chance to hit taking swings back at him. If either of the duo sings first, there's a very good chance the 99% will go down. If the 99% takes out the 80% before he has a chance to hit, he's likely to fall to the 91%'s swing. If he takes out the 91% with his first swing, 80% still has a good chance to take him down. That's without considering things like dodge chances.

One guy is 20x more likely to miss, the other is "just" 9 times, even if you assume either one of them can still hit that's still a 1.8% chance to miss a target they are both attacking, almost 2x higher than the lone warrior.

Not even considering other requirements like space and placement while still cutting down the enemy LOS, gear or implants, even if everything was the same the lone warrior would perform almost twice as reliably as the other 2.

Granted there's also a chance to hit an enemy twice, and that's something the lone guy can't do, then again, if the weapon is of a good kind and quality (IE: Legendary monosword or zeus hammer) most threats are deleted in a single strike

Knowing these things is probably the only way to survive in certain games, like Ironman Battle Brothers or, to a lesser extent, Xenonauts and XCOM, at low ranges hit chances barely even matter if you can't afford to miss at all.

[gimmethegepgun]

VoiD の投稿を引用：

If you want that monosword blow to hit, and to erase a dangerous threat NOW, one guy is half as likely to get the job done than the other.

No. They aren't. They're twice as likely to fail, but that's only the same as being half as likely to succeed in the case of 1/3 vs 2/3.
The guy with 80% hit chance is 80 / 90 = 0.88888 = 11.1% less likely to succeed than the guy with 90% hit chance.